Critical Infrastructure Resilience: Resilience Thinking in Australia's Federal Critical Infrastructure Protection Policy

Abstract

Australia’s national security policy is set out in a number of complex and interrelated policy documents that span multiple agencies, impact all levels of government (federal, state and local) and require strong partnerships with the private sector. This study examines the emergence of the term and concept of critical infrastructure (CI) in modern policy and its development in Australia’s national security policy. Since its emergence in Australian federal policy, the term CI has evolved and stabilised. Yet, in the last decade CI policy has expanded to incorporate resilience thinking and the concept of critical infrastructure resilience (CIR) is now at the core of Australia’s federal CI policy. This study identifies the emergence and development of federal policy focused on protecting Australia’s most vital assets in peacetime. In doing so, it highlights that in Australian federal policy, CIR has been conceptualised in four distinct ways. However, resilience as a body of knowledge is still evolving. Articulating and analysing how resilience thinking has been incorporated into Australia’s federal CI policy, is an important next step in assessing policy focused on the protection Australia’s most vital and iconic assets.

Keywords

• Counterterrorism
• critical infrastructure
• infrastructure protection
• resilience
• policy
• national security
• global war on terror